


Portents

by talefeathers



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Drabble, Foreshadowing, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-25 22:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15649938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: In the wake of the apparent death of the boy from the way station, the man in black torments the gunslinger.





	Portents

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "You've always got me" for anyone from the Dark Tower series

Roland clutches the limp body of the boy from the way station and refuses to believe that he is dead.

Somewhere behind him he can hear the tittering of the man in black, but he refuses that, too; he shuts his eyes against it as if that will also shut his ears.

“Another one gone, gunslinger,” the man in black laments cheerily, his voice insisting itself into Roland’s head. “Another love sacrificed to your love for the Tower, though that love is as doomed as all the rest.”

“Shut up,” Roland tells him, voice level.

“Which is more monstrous, do you think?” the man in black continues as though Roland has not spoken. “The man who is loveless, or the man whose love is a death warrant?”

Roland’s arms tighten around the boy’s small frame.

“But this isn’t just about the fact that you loved him,” the man in black continues. “Because, of course, he loved you, too. Even you, self-effacing as you are, knew that. You knew that, if you had but cried off the Tower, he would have come to call you ‘Father.’ He would have –”

Roland’s guns are in his hands before he even realizes he has let go of the boy. He whirls, revolvers roaring, but he never catches even the flick of the man in black’s coat. Only that horrible, tittering laughter, fading in every direction.

“Not to worry, Roland, my dear,” the man in black calls from farther and farther away. “You’ve always got me.”

—

Roland opens his eyes to the darkness of the forest.

He turns his head, and he sees Jake’s small form curled beside the remains of their fire. He listens, and he hears the boy breathing. He exhales, and he pulls both hands down over his face.

But for the rest of the night, he cannot banish the man in black’s laughter from his mind.


End file.
